וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ — before the first act of creation, the earth is תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, a rhyming pair found nowhere else with this exact sense: shapeless, unformed, not-yet-anything. It describes a state prior to order, not a mess made by disorder. Modern Hebrew flattens the distinction: תוהו ובוהו now just means chaos or a mess — a messy desk, a chaotic office, a disorganized plan are all תוהו ובוהו. Israeli publishers have used the phrase as the title of children's books, political pamphlets ("תוהו ובוהו מדיני," on the political chaos of pre-state settlement) and literary essay collections, always trading on the same everyday sense of disorder rather than the specific pre-creation void of the verse.

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר — the first words God speaks, and the first recorded instance of speech bringing something into being. יְהִי אוֹר ("let there be light") became a stock phrase for inauguration and renewal in modern Hebrew: building dedications, new institutions, and communal ceremonies invoke it as a way of marking a beginning. The National Library's archive of the Dalia Dance Festival — the mass folk-dance gatherings of the Kibbutz movement in the 1940s–50s — preserves a musical number literally titled "יהי אור!", its lyrics and score handwritten in white ink on black paper, using the verse as the festival's own opening flourish.

וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא יָדַעְתִּי הֲשֹׁמֵר אָחִי אָנֹכִי — Cain's defensive deflection, asked instead of answering for his brother, is one of the Torah's most quoted rhetorical questions: an evasion so famous it now reads as an assertion of responsibility rather than a denial of it. "שומר אחי אנוכי" ("I am my brother's keeper") was the actual name of an international campaign organization active from the late 1970s through the 1980s advocating for Soviet Refuseniks, including Natan Sharansky — the National Library's archives hold its posters, notebooks, and campaign files under that name. A 1971 caricature by the Israeli cartoonist Dosh, drawn for Maariv, put the original question mark back: "שומר אחי אנכי?!", turning Cain's excuse into a live challenge about international indifference — it survives in the Dosh Archive, though under a restricted-access license that keeps it off this page.